PCC supports mobile number portability to spur competition
THE Philippine Competition Commission ( PCC) said it supports a bill which allows mobile phone users to keep their old numbers when switching service providers, as a means of boosting competition in the industry.
In a statement Monday, PCC Chairman Arsenio M. Balisacan said that consumers should have the choice to switch telco providers should they encounter poor service, but the change should be made as friction-free as possible via mobile number portability (MNP).
“When disgruntled consumers want to bolt to a new or another network provider, having MNP in place means people are not prisoners of the network simply because they want to keep their digits,” he added.
According to PCC, MNP, which is a feature of the Malaysian and Singaporean telecommunications industries, allows phone users a measure of continuity in their dealings.
“In this age when a person’s phone number is considered part of one’s identity, changing numbers can sometimes mean lost opportunities, access, or connections. If MNP is in place, a person can retain one’s number without having to worry about that,” Mr. Balisacan said.
On Tuesday, the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) during a Senate hearing on the MNP Act also said MNP may help attracting new players into the market.
NTC has been advocating MNP as early as 2008.
Last year, Senator Sherwin T. Gatchalian filed Senate Bill No. 1237 or the Mobile Number Portability Act which proposes that public communications entities should give their subscribers a mobile number they can keep even if they change network service providers.
“The price of the software we need to operate the porting of mobile numbers has gone down [ since 2008]. There is still a possibility that consumers may shoulder some of the costs, but we are currently consolidating studies and frameworks to make it completely free for all subscribers,” Mr. Gatchalian said in a statement on Wednesday. —